Dem primary: Ogg on campaign trail, Oliver on the couch

Perennial judicial candidate Lloyd Oliver is again seeking the Democratic nomination for Harris County District Attorney. Shot in courtroom in Harris County Criminal Justice Center, 1201 Franklin Street.
Wednesday
5/30/12 (Craig H. Hartley/For the Chronicle) less

Perennial judicial candidate Lloyd Oliver is again seeking the Democratic nomination for Harris County District Attorney. Shot in courtroom in Harris County Criminal Justice Center, 1201 Franklin Street. ... more

Running for the Democratic nomination for Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg has spent the past four months shaking hands, staking out her positions on criminal justice issues and raising about $100,000.

Her opponent, perennial candidate Lloyd Oliver, has been watching television.

Translator

On March 6, Texas voters will decide who will carry the Democratic party's mantle into the battle for governor and a slew of other statewide offices. Click here for full coverage of the primary elections. Find our voters guide here.

"Ogg's got to figure out a way to get a reasonable share of the African-American vote, which Mr. Fertitta did not get in 2012," said Richard Murray, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. "We may have only 60,000-70,000 come out for the (Democratic) primary and with two million registered voters, it's a real crapshoot."

This year, Oliver said, he does not plan to campaign until the general election. Name recognition, he said, will determine who wins the primary.

And Oliver appears to have plenty of that. Since 1994, Oliver has run for judge five times, and district attorney once. Having his name in front of voters every few years - which Oliver uses as advertising for his legal practice – paid off in his race against Fertitta. He expects it will again.

'Nothing you can do'

"There's really nothing you can do," he said. "Whatever is going to happen, is going to happen in the primary."

Nonetheless, Ogg, 54, is taking him seriously.

"I've believed Lloyd every time before when he's said he runs as a publicity stunt," she said. "I'm not about to take one thing for granted, even Lloyd's ability to get votes despite when he does nothing."

Taking a cue from his missteps in 2012, Oliver said he purposefully is doing little in order to minimize criticism.

After he won the primary, the Harris County Democratic Party unsuccessfully sued to remove him from the ballot, based on his prior runs as a Republican.

During several candidate forums, he seemed unconcerned about the victims of domestic violence and advocated for boxing lessons for women in abusive relationships.

The 70-year-old has been indicted three times, twice for barratry, but never convicted. He also had his law license suspended twice after client complaints in the 1980s.

Since Oliver is not campaigning, Ogg has worked to distinguish herself from the policies of the current district attorney's office. Her first order of business, she said, will be to reverse the district attorney's so-called "trace case" policy.

'Trace case' policy

The issue was hotly debated in 2012 when GOP challenger Mike Anderson unseated incumbent Pat Lykos in the GOP primary. Lykos had created a policy calling for the issuance of misdemeanor tickets instead of charging drug users with felonies for cases in which police found less than 1/100th of a gram of cocaine in crack pipes or other drug paraphernalia.

Anderson reversed Lykos' policy shortly after taking office. After Anderson died last August, his widow, Devon Anderson, was appointed to the office and said she would continue her husband's policy.

Former prosecutor

She is the only Republican candidate on the ballot in the March 4 primary. The post will be on the ballot again in 2016.

Ogg, who has been practicing law for 26 years, is a former prosecutor who led CrimeStoppers from 1999 to 2006. Before that, she was the first head of the city's anti-gang task force. She is in practice with her father, former state Sen. Jack Ogg.

In addition to ticketing low-level drug users for cocaine residue, Ogg also supports diversion programs for people caught with small amounts of marijuana. Instead of putting people with less than 2 ounces of marijuana in jail, she said, those funds should be spent prosecuting violent offenders, gang members and thieves.

"I've raised over $100,000 and it's because people are not satisfied with the justice system and they want real change," Ogg said. "I don't think Lloyd is in this race for the greater good or to bring any change or do anything but benefit personally."